The Witness Chronicles, 1/20/25
TikyToky idiocy
The Death of TikTok and the Demise of Democracy
For now at least, but this thing isn’t cooked yet
Sunday was a big news day. Three hostages were released by Hamas in Israel and hopefully they are the beginning of the end to the horrors there. Washington was awash in Inauguration parties, if you had the millions required for tickets. But these events were eclipsed by a national tragedy of epic proportions.
170 million Americans are mourning the loss of TikTok, a meaningless app that has mesmerized a majority of the country while sharing everything they know and do with China, our greatest enemy. That entire sentence might be the most absurd and surrealistic thing I have ever written and it is the truth.
Today Donald Trump has been sworn in as the 47th President of the United States, surrounded by billionaires celebrating their political takeover of the world’s most sustained democracy and the greatest military power ever seen. Or so we are told, though China is moving up fast as they risk their entire economy to build a massive, highly advanced military.
But TikTok? Really? Are we really that stupid and self-absorbed? Of course we are. I watched a grown man, if twenty-something is grown, crying on national television over the loss of endless tiny videos of people acting like idiots while a dictator and his courtiers took over our country.
It’s quite amazing to see our country go to hell in a handbasket in a few short years. I wish I could be blasé about it but WTF? TikTok? Really?
We should be living in an enlightened age of technology right now. Instead we get what David Mattin, in his brilliant newsletter on AI, New World Same Humans, calls the splinterverse, an information landscape that divides instead of unites humanity.
Donald Trump learned the power of dividing people into us and them and it took him to the pinnacle of power on this planet. The lesson he learned is one every bully, no matter how intellectually stupid they may be, learns early on. Build a power base of lackeys, ridicule everyone around you, and then create a cult of power, often based on nothing.
I mention this because it is the culmination of many Americans checking out from reality and choosing willful ignorance over freedom and reality. Their reality is now short videos endlessly appearing on a tiny screen they must watch every waking moment. Zombies, but zombies sharing those moments with a country far away bent on world domination.
I almost laughed while writing those words because they sound like a synopsis of a bad Hollywood screenplay, a screenplay which has already morphed into a giant hit, a blockbuster.
Outside my windows, the world is draped in six inches of powder snow that fell overnight. It is bitter cold, 15 degrees and my weather app tells me it feels like 10. In DC the weather is similar and the Trump inauguration was moved indoors, leaving thousands of his most rabid followers out in the cold, literally.
The sergeant at arms of the Capitol told them to consider their costly tickets, ‘commemorative’ souvenirs of the event. Perhaps the most cynical thing I’ve heard recently, and that is a big hurdle to achieve in these cynical times. As usual, Donald Trump found yet another way to screw over his fan base of rubes and chumps. Let them eat snow…
This feels like a turning point I hoped I would not live to see. A convicted felon setting his hand on a bible, likely burning it in the process, and being sworn in as leader of the free world, while the wealthy who put him there smile knowingly at what they have achieved. But worse things loom on the horizon.
TikTok must be revived or the masses might get restless and realize what has taken place…nah, that won’t happen. Too many brain cells have been sacrificed in the name of wasted time, too many millions of moments lost to a tiny screen, too many minds realizing they are addicts whose dealer has cut them off.
Their drug will return. It’s too useful to the autocrats. Dystopian writers used to think it would literally be a drug that would turn the people into complacent zombies, but no, it was just an idea, turned into an app, and given away to anyone who wants it.
Tomorrow I will revert to the optimist I aspire to be every day, but right now the confluence of idiocy and criminal conspirators on the national stage is a bit too much. We know what Trump and his puppeteers will do. They have broadcast it openly and it is likely starting as I write this. He says he will sign dozens or even hundreds of executive orders today, propelling the democracy into something his supporters cannot fathom.
One wonders if they will even notice. Or care if they do.
We have a duty. Tell them what is being done by this man. Drill it into them. And call these ‘leaders’ what they are, charlatans and con artists and worse. There was no mandate. 70 million voters simply checked out and pretended their votes wouldn’t count, so why bother? After all, there is this video on TikTok that I have been hearing about…
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Martin Edic
Martin, This is very sad and also brilliant.
Totally agree. I was working as a software developer when Facebook emerged from the swamp. I refused to sign up for it because it was obvious that a dating app for frat boys was a security nightmare. Other than Medium and Substack, most social media apps are as stupid as TicTock.
MLK must be turning in his grave - the Trump inauguration should be a day of national mourning - and probably will be at some point